The fact that technology is moving beyond the personal computer to everyday items is becoming a reality as computing devices are becoming progressively smaller and more powerful. Pervasive computing involves associating small electronic devices (also known as “tags”) that have unique tag identifiers (UTID) with items for the purpose of gathering information about the items, such as their location and pattern of movement. Examples of items include, but are not limited to, people, places and objects. Objects include, but are not limited to trees, clothing, cell phones, laptops, etc. UTIDs may be serial numbers that are stored in read only memory (ROM) associated with the tags, for example.
The tags may communicate the UTIDs associated with them to other devices. For example, the tags may broadcast the UTIDs and other devices may be listening for the broadcast. In another example, the other devices may read the UTID from the tag, for example, by “swiping” the tag against the other devices.
Since tags can communicate the UTIDs associated with them to other devices, the tags may be used to locate items or determine items' patterns of movement. For example, a tag may be placed in the label of a shirt so that a store can locate the shirt after a customer moved it from the rack. In another example, tags may be inserted under a pet's skin so the pet can be located if it gets lost. In a third example, a person may be tracked because they are carrying a cell phone that broadcasts a UTID. The tag may be incorporated into the item itself as opposed to being a separate entity. For example in the case of the cell phone, the tag may be inside of the cell phone.
Since devices can listen for or read the UTIDs, there is a threat that people's privacy may be compromised. Until recently, the threat of compromising people's privacy has been limited because the infrastructure for doing so is not yet widespread, tracking software is not yet very sophisticated, and people can in any case easily switch off their portable devices, such as their cell phones.
However, as the technology advances, the probability of people's privacy being invaded due to this technology is increasing. For example, a tag may be associated with a person in some fashion, such as embedding the tag in the person's belt. The tag in the belt may transmit its UTID. Other devices that are associated with various places that the person comes near during their daily activities may recognize and identify not only the person but may collect information about their pattern of movement based on the UTID that the belt's tag broadcasts. The identification of the person and/or the information about their pattern of movement may be used to compromise the person's rights to privacy that are protected under the law.
For these and other reasons, a method and/or a system that ensures privacy would be valuable.